"As word of the Darfur genocide was first spreading, U.S. ambassador John Danforth was in Khartoum putting the finishing touches on a North-South peace deal. This peace deal could have been better enforced on both sides, but so far, it has held. It would be best for everyone in Sudan to keep the peace."-- from a reader, who is horrified by the idea of a small American force quickly destroying Sudan's airforce and holding Darfur and the southern Sudan until a referendum on independence can be held

No, you are wrong. The "peace treaty" in the south has not, as you put it, "held." The Khartoum government never intended to honor it, and it has not. In the last six months that government has violated that agreement, and its many violations are known to members of Air Force intelligence monitoring the southern Sudan. That this has not been reported in The Times means nothing.

Your comment about the anti-black remarks of the Janjaweed shows you missed my point. For those comments do not show that Islam is irrelevant here; they show perfectly that Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism, and that Arab Muslims will, whenever they feel like it, seize the lands or otherwise oppress -- culturally, linguistically in the case of the Berbers of Algeria -- non-Arab Muslims. Who do you think killed the Kurds in Iraq? Who do you think punished the Berbers (until recently) even for speaking the Berber language? And shouldn't the behavior of the Arab government in Khartoum, and the Arab regimes that are openly or secretly backing it, and Osama Bin Laden who attacks the Khartoum regime now, not for supporting the Janjaweed, but for appearing to yield, however cosmetic that yielding may be, to some outside pressure?

Finally, you make an idiotic remark about my being an agent of Osama bin Laden because he sees Sudan as a place where Islam and the Infidels are clashing, and so do I. And he also thinks that Islam teaches Muslims to remove all barriers to Islam, and to work for the spread of Islam, the rightful dominance of Islam and Muslims, everywhere. And if I -- or Robert Spencer, or Senor Fulano de Tal -- agree that Islam does indeed teach "Muslims to remove all barriers to Islam, and to work for the spread...and rightful dominance of Islam and Muslims," are we then "agents" of Bin Laden?

Several readers object to what they see as support for "humanitarian" intervention to save Muslims from other Muslims. They are missing the point. The Muslims being saved are, potentially, those who might be willing to abandon Islam, and the main reason for an Expeditionary Field Force (shades of Suakin) is to put a stop to the Muslim conquest of Sudan, south and west, and a further thrust southward. More Halford Mackinder than Mother Teresa, though in this case they may be considered to be usefully coupled. Geopolitics makes strange bedfellows.